


Active principle

by JosieCarioca



Series: The Toy Box [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cute, Family Fluff, Gen, Short & Sweet, Snape Has A Heart, Tumblr Prompt, Writing Exercise, uncle sev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23740198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JosieCarioca/pseuds/JosieCarioca
Summary: Severus is spending some time with his nieces when he sees an opportunity to teach them a valuable lesson.Written for a"one page challenge" based on a prompt chosen by my tumblr mutuals/followers.
Relationships: Severus Snape & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Toy Box [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662841
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Active principle

“UNCLE SEEEEEEEV!!”

The moment Lizzie´s scream reached his ears, Severus knew what he had done wrong.

He should have reminded them not to touch any plants he hadn´t shown them before. Lizzie sometimes forgot. Remembering instructions can be a bit tricky when you´re just six years old, after all.

Severus got to his knees and examined her hand, with Alice leaning over his shoulder, concerned as a good older sister should be, but also curious to find out what had caused the injury. Stinging nettle. As a boy, Severus had encountered the little bastards quite often when out in the woods behind the mill searching for ingredients for his mother.

“All right, girls, time to get back inside. Alice, will you fetch me my kit?”

Alice nodded and dutifully ran back inside the house, going straight for the cabinet where he kept his household daily use potions and ointments. At age eight (or rather “eight going on thirty” as Evelyn often joked) she had been showing all the telltale signs of magic for a while, and her vivid interest in science and plants had prompted him to ask her mother for permission to start teaching her a thing or two about potion-making. Soon, her letter would arrive and Severus wanted to make sure her potions professor would have an excellent impression of her on day one.

Severus picked Lizie up and carried her into the kitchen, her strawberry-blonde head resting on his shoulder as she fought back the tears. Then he washed her hands, wipped the disobedient tears running down her freckled cheeks and sat her on a chair as Alice brought the magically sealed wooden box. He opened it with the right incantation and got a pot of ointment for nettle burn.

“Alice, I´ve got a test for you. Close your eyes and take a good sniff of this” he told his older niece, holding the little pot full of oitnment under her nose. She closed her eyes and inhaled very deeply. “Now go into the bathroom cabinet and bring me one thing that you think smells the same.”

“Got it!” she made her signature 'eureka' facce and dashed across the house.

“Uncle Sev?” Lizze called quietly, as he started to carefully apply the ointment to her hand.

“Yes, love?”

“I´m not magic like Alice, am I?” Severus looked her face, at her big green eyes still misty with tears and felt an odd pang at his heart. He had seen that look of disaappointment before. He hadn´t cared then. He had been a boy too caught up in his own turmoil to care and Petunia was just a girl who happened to be in the way of his spending time with Lily. He hadn´t thought of her disappointment. But now? Now seeing that same look on Lizzie´s face...Now, it hurt.

“It´s early to tell.” he only half-lied.

“What if I´m not?” she asked, looking down at her hand as the burn started to vanish and the skin became clear again.

“That´s fine if you´re not. You´ll just go to a different school, have a different job when you grow up.”

“But that´s boring when you´re...how do you call it when you´re not magic?”

“If you´re not magic, you´re a muggle. And that all depends on what you call boring. Remember Mr. And Mrs. Weasley? Well, Mr. Weasley thinks all muggle things are very exciting. And he´s a wizard.” Severus caught a little hint of a smile, and something occurred to him “I´ve got an idea: why don´t we visit them tomorrow? Aunt Lyn is taking your sister to the library, and you said you didn´t want to go... so we can go see Mr. Weasley just the two of us, instead.You can tell him all you know about muggle things, I´m sure he will love to hear it.”

Lizzie nodded enthusiatically just as her sister came back running with a bottle of lotion in her hands. Alice put it on the table infront of him as if it was an offering before the altar and stepped back, pushing a lock of brown hair behind her ear, her golden-brown eyes (Evelyn´s eyes, he always thought to himself), sparkling with anticipation to know if she was right. Severus looked at the label.

“Aloe Vera. Excellent, Alice. You got it right. “ Alice and Lizzie smiled at each other, and Severus proceeded with their lesson. “Now, girls, I´ll teach you about something called 'active principle'. The active principle is the main ingredient of any medicine or potion, it´s the thing that makes it work. It´s the soul of it, so to speak. In this case, as Alice guessed, it´s aloe vera. So what´s the difference between these two?”

“This is magic and this is not” the two answered almost in unisson, pointing first at the ointment then at the lotion.

“And what what is it that magic does?”

“It makes it better.” Alice answered promptly. Severus eyed Lizzie, who had gone suddenly quiet.

“But say,” he continued. “if I had put the lotion instead of the ointment on Lizzie´s hand, would it still heal?”

“Yes.” Alice answered in that overtly grown-up tone she had when she wanted to impress him. “It just would take longer.”

“Exactly. Magic can speed things up or make them easier. But that doesn´t mean you need magic for everything. This lotion and this ointment have the exact same active principle, so they do the same thing, but in different ways. Like you two, girls. You´re sisters, you have the same mum, and the same family and you live in the same house, but you´re different and the same things differently and have different talents.”

“Like how I´m good at science and Lizzie is good at art.”Alice offered, and Lizzie finally smiled a little wider.

“Exactly. Now, why don´t you go get the specimens we collected and start organizing them for labelling.” then he added, giving Lizzie a barely perceptible wink. “While you get on with that, I´ve got to send Mr. Weasley an owl.”

  
  



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